Problems with Magenta... and Yellow... (and a little with Cyan) and now Black

[3dogs]

DO NOT finish wet-cleaning a print head with tap water! Either use distilled water, or distilled water!

There is too much risk of clogging due to mineral deposition from evaporated tap water in the tiny nozzles.

Good point this, I had not even considered the risk from tap water, and I am further warned that my Tank water, a combination of rainwater and high quality bore water carry even more potential for messing up a nozzle - Thanks for the valuable info

 

[Lestrad]

DO NOT finish wet-cleaning a print head with tap water! Either use distilled water, or distilled water!

There is too much risk of clogging due to mineral deposition from evaporated tap water in the tiny nozzles.

Thanks. What do you suggest if a rinse with hot tap water followed by a soak in demineralized water (changing the water a few times) doesn't work?

 

[martin0reg]

"magenta stopped working" - may I ask what that means and how it looks while printing?
If you print a nozzle check: no stripes in the bar, simply disappearing? And coming back as suddenly?

Post some scans of bad nozzle checks or prints to see how it looks.

My only idea is that the electronic blocks a nozzle row to prevent overheating, if there is bad or no ink flow, probably detected by high temperature.
One method to prove or "prime" the ink flow of the cartridge is to blow carefully into the upper side (vent hole) until ink drops out of the outlet.. but beware of a magenta mouth..

 

[Lestrad]

"magenta stopped working" - may I ask what that means and how it looks while printing?
If you print a nozzle check: no stripes in the bar, simply disappearing? And coming back as suddenly?

Post some scans of bad nozzle checks or prints to see how it looks.

My only idea is that the electronic blocks a nozzle row to prevent overheating, if there is bad or no ink flow, probably detected by high temperature.
One method to prove or "prime" the ink flow of the cartridge is to blow carefully into the upper side (vent hole) until ink drops out of the outlet.. but beware of a magenta mouth..

Sorry I'm only responding now, but once again I didn't get a notification of your response. In fact the magenta suddenly disappears altogether. So you may be on the right track with your overheating idea.

I'm about to try the old print head after rinsing it and soaking it in demineralized water. I'll post the results here.
______--______
(later) With the old print head back in, the magenta is printing fine, but now the photo black is failing to print. I've never had problems with it before. Any ideas?

 

[martin0reg]

This happened to me just a few days ago:
I changed the carts in a ip4000 for trying another ink, both sets were refilled.
For about 20 prints all was fine - then the magenta suddenly stopped working while printing an A4 testchart. The nozzlecheck was missing all magenta bars.
Changed again back to the previous cart, magenta was back.
So the problem was caused most probably by bad ink flow from the M cart of the second set.
But note: when I examined this cart, ink was flowing! So there was no indication that this cart would not deliver ink - which I think was the case while printing with this cart..

 

[turbguy]

e.
(later) With the old print head back in, the magenta is printing fine, but now the photo black is failing to print. I've never had problems with it before. Any ideas?

Suggest you print nothing except nozzle test prints unit the problem is resolved. Else you may damage starved nozzles.

Check the black cart for proper ink flow. Try a different cart. Run only one cleaning cycle (as this task may also file nozzles), and report back.

 

[Lestrad]

Suggest you print nothing except nozzle test prints unit the problem is resolved. Else you may damage starved nozzles.

Check the black cart for proper ink flow. Try a different cart. Run only one cleaning cycle (as this task may also file nozzles), and report back.

Well, I've already run a couple of cleaning cycles... The black cartridge in question was working fine just before I changed back to the "old" print head. Just to make sure, I blew air into the top vent until ink dribbled out. I'm attaching a scan of the latest nozzle test (nozzle6.jpg):

The situation improves slightly with each nozzle test (see nozzle4.jpg below - from an earlier nozzle check):

But I feel I need to do something else. What about replacing the black cartridge with one with cleaning liquid in it? (The cleaning fluid I have is from Eversmeyer at www.go-in-webshop.de.) Or removing the head again and dripping cleaning fluid into the hole for the black cartridge? So far all I've used is water - tap water, then a soak in demineralized water.
Thanks for your help! I wish we were in the same time zone.

 

[The Hat]

@Lestead I was following your progress and what tends to stick out in most of your posts in that you’re overthinking the whole situation completely.

You have a serious problem with your cartridges and your refilling technique and you’re hell bent on blaming the poor ink performance on your print head when clearly all of the issues are cartridge related.

Concentrate more on the way you refill and try to work out what you’re doing wrong because you started this thread with Magenta and Yellow ink flow problems and your latest nozzle print shows that the black is now showing exactly the same symptoms.

These opaque cartridges that you’re using are not very good for refilling using the German method and have a tendency to give problems after refilling so can you switch to the top fill method and see if that makes any difference at all.

You could also try a set of 521/520 cartridges, they are far easier to refill than your current 525/526 ones are, and can easily be converted over by switching the chip on each cartridge.

Now if you have a problem finding a set of these cartridges I can give you a redundant set that I am not using at present, if you think that this will help you get back to normal printing and save any further ink flow problems.
A Question:- do you have a resetter for your cartridge chips.

 

[martin0reg]

The photoblack bar of the nozzle check really looks more like ink starvation from the cartridge than a clogged head. So I agree with The Hat.

If this happens with new OEM cartridge too, I would be surprised.
There could be a kind of free floating clogg in the head between inlet and nozzle plate which is causing this, but firstly I would suspect the cart when looking at the black bar.

PS: cleaning carts are less effective than soaking the head IMHO...and if at all I would mix ink with ceaning solution, to control that the fluid is indeed printing... canon bubble jet heads really are easy to be burnt when printing without ink... other than piezo heads...

 

[Lestrad]

@Lestead I was following your progress and what tends to stick out in most of your posts in that you’re overthinking the whole situation completely.

You have a serious problem with your cartridges and your refilling technique and you’re hell bent on blaming the poor ink performance on your print head when clearly all of the issues are cartridge related.

Concentrate more on the way you refill and try to work out what you’re doing wrong because you started this thread with Magenta and Yellow ink flow problems and your latest nozzle print shows that the black is now showing exactly the same symptoms.

These opaque cartridges that you’re using are not very good for refilling using the German method and have a tendency to give problems after refilling so can you switch to the top fill method and see if that makes any difference at all.

You could also try a set of 521/520 cartridges, they are far easier to refill than your current 525/526 ones are, and can easily be converted over by switching the chip on each cartridge.

Now if you have a problem finding a set of these cartridges I can give you a redundant set that I am not using at present, if you think that this will help you get back to normal printing and save any further ink flow problems.
A Question:- do you have a resetter for your cartridge chips.

Thanks, Hat and martin0. As a matter of fact I am using 521/520 cartridges with the chips from the 525/526 ones, and I do have a 525/526 resetter. I'm using the Durchstich method.
One possible source of problems is that I go through long periods where I don't print much. Another is that I have ink that might be too old. I have some from Eversmeyer (www.go-in-webshop.de) and some from Octoinkjet. The Octoinkjet ink is from two years ago, but the magenta bottle was sealed until I opened it a little while ago. The black and cyan now in the cartridges are the Eversmeyer ink, and the yellow and magenta are Octoinkjet. I have some fresh ink on order from them. I suppose what I should do is flush out the cartridges and fill them with fresh ink and go from there. I won't be able to do that for a little while though, until I get my latest order from Octoinkjet.
Meanwhile, if you could point me to some advice on flushing cartridges I'd greatly appreciate it.
Regarding refilling techniques, any thoughts you might have on the Freedom method would be appreciated as well.
Les